• khepri@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I’m all for taxing and regulating the hell out of these totally unneeded luxuries, but air travel is 2% of global emissions, and private jets are 2% of that. They are a pure luxury, and so are a good target for emissions reduction, but this would be just one of hundreds of similarly-sized initiatives needed to move the needle at this point. It’s also not a “soft target” since we’d have to take something away from the rich that they like, which costs a lot of time and political capital that then can’t be used elsewhere, perhaps to greater impact.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOPM
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Political capital is more like muscle than a one-shot battery: it gets stronger when you use it in ways that have public support.

      • khepri@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Point well taken, but I’d say getting the US Congress to agree to things that inconvenience the rich might be an exception. I really wish we could get the ball rolling on that in a self-sustaining, self-amplifying way that compounded to larger and larger changes and more and more public support. But that just isn’t how my government has worked in my lifetime in my experience.